Subtopic 1: Understanding the risks of internet fragmentation
Rapporteur: Bojana Kovač
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 5 Different governments, actors, and stakeholders have different perspectives on what internet fragmentation is. Thus, it is crucial to address the risks that come with it rather than trying to define it. Government regulations that fragment the internet, whether intentionally or not, prevent it from being an open space. The failure to explain the nuance of regulations and the unclear type of intervention imposed by such regulations are among the main concerns that internet fragmentation policies raise.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 1 Geopolitics is another concern, as politicising the fundamentals of the internet can endanger its technical nature. Content regulations that had unintentional effects on the technical level are now becoming intentional. The call for action is to enhance cross-government education and communication on internet governance while also ensuring that companies and the civil society sector are included in such discussions.
Par 1_
I agree with @Vbertola and @ClaudiaLeopardi on shortening the second sentence. Regarding the third sentence, we should not limit the scope to government actions, so I’d rephrase it to (changes in bold) “Policy proposals that fragment the Internet, whether intentionally or not, prevent it from being a global space” (the use of “global” is preferred to “open”). I don’t understand the objective and meaning of the last sentence.
Par 2_
On the last sentence, it is important to include the following: “… ensuring that companies, civil society and the technical community are included in such discussions.”
Regarding @Vittorio’s second comment, if I am understanding it’s point correctly, I do agree that not discussing the definition was an aim of the session itself (to be able to stay in the 45 minutes), but defining Internet Fragmentation in works such as the PNIF Output Document is indeed useful. For this reason, I’d agree that changing the second sentence of the first message to “Thus, it is crucial to address the risks that come with it.” can be a good idea to avoid confusion.
@Flindeberg – many people argue that also breaking the flow of information at the application level is fragmentation. This is why the discussion about definition is unsolved. By the way, I am not sure why we want to say that definitions are useless; it seems like gratuitous criticism of what the IGF PNIF has been doing. Perhaps we could just say “Thus, it is crucial to address the risks that come with it.”
As discussed in the final session, we should acknowledge that some governmental intervention is either positive or necessary to protect other things (e.g. privacy or competition), even if it creates some fragmentation. We also need to add a mention of private sector led fragmentation. My proposal for the third sentence would be:
“Government regulations that fragment the internet, whether intentionally or not, prevent it from being an open space, though they may sometimes be necessary to protect other rights and the public interest. Private sector may also fragment the internet by closing down services into walled gardens and breaking the principle of interoperability through open standards.”
If this is too long, I would rather drop the current last sentence (“The failure…”) – I am not actually sure of what it means. Or, we could break point 1 into two points.
“Thus, it is crucial to address the risks that come with it rather than trying to define it”
Isn’t a fragmented Internet one where the idea of one global Internet does not hold? That is fragmented unique identifiers, regardless of if it is v4 vs v6, ccTLDs, or anything else. Or in other words, the infrastructure layers of the Internet needs to be kept intact, and that the infrastructure and transport layers are fundamentally separated from the information that flows over the network.